


The Witch in the Woods

by NevillesGran



Series: Juno Steel and the Good Neighbors [2]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Bargains, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Referenced Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:42:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21761065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: You know the instant the changeling enters your domain again, with a new supplicant in tow. The newest gift freezes the moment he’s crossed the threshold, his face a mask of triumph and fear at once—or, it would be if he didn’t double over coughing.(Or: Juno accepts a bargain and a risk.)
Series: Juno Steel and the Good Neighbors [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566202
Comments: 6
Kudos: 97





	The Witch in the Woods

You know the instant the changeling enters your domain again, with a new supplicant in tow. He never comes without one—you wouldn’t mind; you’d offer him hospitality for an evening or three; he’s brought you quite enough interesting gifts to earn that. But he’s wary—he wouldn’t have survived his childhood otherwise.

The newest gift freezes the moment he’s crossed the threshold, his face a mask of triumph and fear at once—or, it would be if he didn’t double over coughing. The air outside the door they used is dry with death.

“I knew it,” he gasps as soon as his breath has returned. “I knew you were—something. Are you—one of _them?_ ”

His hand moves reflexively to a weapon at his hip, and he looks behind himself for a door. It’s vanished, of course, and he curses, turning in a full circle to survey your little hut.

It’s quite nice, you think. There’s a gentle fire in the oven, and a stove above with tea leaves beside, ready to be brewed. There’s a bed of willow and down, plucked from the weepingest trees and the sweetest singing birds. There’s a lovely table and racks of herbs and other collectibles, which someone once carved as payment for your services, and a beautiful rug covers the floor, woven for the same. The walls are sod and the roof sturdy thatch. 

The supplicant is on edge now, eyes gone wild with the fear of one from the Mortal world who recognizes the danger of Faerie’s. He has been here before. Though really, your hut belongs to neither world—you have tucked it neatly in the space between, for situations just like this.

“I am not,” the changeling says calmly. “Neither by birth nor by choice.” 

He then bows to the room at large, as you have yet to show yourself. “Lady Hanataba, I have brought a man seeking your aid. If you are present, will you entertain his plea?”

He’s very polite, too, is the changeling—another survival skill. You have more often been called _witch_ than _lady_ , over the years—or hag, sorceress, baba. You’ve never cared for any of the courts, but you don’t mind the address.

So you step out of the shadows by the hanging herbs, in the elderly guise that feels more and more natural with each passing century. 

“I shall. Well-met, stag-tamer.” You jerk your head toward the stove. “Make some tea.”

He moves to obey—not hastily, but not dilly-dallying either.

“Nope!” says the wary supplicant, backing up to the sod wall where a door once was. His hand rests on his weapon. “Nothing to drink for me, or eat. Not a chance in hell.” 

“You have not been offered tea,” says the changeling, as he sets the kettle to boil. “And Lady Hanataba is not in the habit of holding debts over petty grievances. She offers select medical care, in exchange for stories.” He offers you another short bow—a nod, really. “I trust her.” 

Foolish child. You really do like this changeling. You’re glad he’s surviving and thriving, in the world he’s chosen.

“He is correct,” you tell the would-be supplicant, who is still ready to fight like a hare. “What do you need removed?”

The hand not on his weapon drifts up toward his right eye, metallic and too-bright. But what he says is: “Why do you assume something needs to be removed? Did the big guy tell you? Is that all you do—steal?”

There is a bitter undertone to that, mostly self-directed. An interesting story, there. You cackle, because that is part of _your_ story, and point to the shelf beside the herbs.

“I have a collection.”

He takes a thoughtless step forward to see without craning his head—your collection, grown over centuries, of bits and pieces of humans and elves and others. Many are eyes—black, blue, brown; cursed, rotten, electronic as his. Others are ears—ass’s, rabbit’s, sometimes recognizably mortal or faerie. Others are clawed hands or twisted feet; robotic knees, a monkey’s tail. Bloody livers and hearts still beating. A handful of vials—a young woman’s tears, an old man’s fear. 

He looks sickened. But he doesn’t step back. He tears his gaze away to ask you, hand drifting up again, “So you’ll take it out and the price is just...keeping it?” He adds sharply, “ _Without_ me dying?”

“No.” You put up a hand before he can react. “Whether my patient survives or not is up to them, not to me. I simply take what is offered—and as payment, I will also take the story of how you came to carry this burden. One of these, I shall keep wholly for myself. The other, you may keep the remnants of—like your Name.”

Again, he is a hare: frozen, seeking flight, but when he finds none, kicking hard. “What _about_ my name?”

You can see the absence, now that you’re looking more closely. You do on occasion accept other payments than stories, and this human may not be a weaver or a carpenter, but he has a considerable amount of wit, more courage than he believes, good honor likewise...fear, self-hatred, grief…other body parts than the eye, of course…

But he’s already given his Name away once. He could always do it again—one can always keep giving of oneself, to a point, and he didn’t surrender it so utterly as that. It’s not lost to him, forgotten, a leash he can’t imagine until it tightens around his throat. _That_ is wound into him through the electronic eye he wants to be rid of. It will be a tricky job to remove, but nothing you haven’t done before. 

There was no such trickery in the loss of his Name—no theft, no gambling, no hint of blinding glamour. No wound at all. The only scars around its absence are from later, that same bitter self-loathing that went into _Is that all you do—steal?_ You can only assume there was a thief—one trusted to the point of love. How _fascinating_ that story must be. 

Yet, as ever, it’s the darkness that most excites you. The secret fears, griefs, and hatreds.

“I’m not interested in it,” you say simply. “If you want my help, I will take either the eye or the story of it wholly. This choice is mine.”

The changeling is pouring water for tea, now. His ears perked up curiously at the mention of the supplicant’s Name, but now he’s regained his self-control.

“Not everyone survives,” he says. “But I believe it is the payment, rather than the operation itself, that kills them.” 

“How does telling a story kill someone,” the supplicant says flatly, glancing between the two of you. 

“When it is not a story they can bear to tell, I think.” There is tension in the changeling, now, even as he pours the boiling water with steady hands. That is how his last friend with a mechanical eye died. He couldn’t stand the memories you’d raised in him with his freedom.

“My prices are high,” you say, and smile with sharp teeth. “I don’t ask for _easy_ stories.”

“Is there...anything else you’ll take? As payment?”

“No.” You tug his chin down to let you look in his leashed eye. “I will hear the story you don’t want to tell even yourself, and while I do, I will remove the device. These are my terms.”

“I have to be awake while you tear the eye out of my head?” he says uneasily—but again, he doesn’t try to step back.

“No.” You hold out your hand. The changeling places a cup of steaming tea in it, and you pass it to your patient. “This will make you fall asleep. You will tell the story much better in your dreams.”

“Okay, Steel,” he whispers under his breath, as he takes the tea and you tug him toward the bed. “It’s just a story. What’s so bad about telling a story?”

You laugh truly this time, cackling and gay at once. “Stories are all we are, child of the moon’s shadow.” You push him to sit. “Do you accept my bargain?”

His eyes flick to the changeling behind you, a silent, _do you really trust this witch?_ The changeling nods. Foolish child.

“Fine,” he says, raggedly and recklessly. “I accept. Do your worst.” 

He downs the tea in one draught, and falls into sleep before he falls back into the willow and down.

You might like this mortal, too. You will take your price no matter what, but perhaps you'll consider his likely survival, when you choose your means of payment. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sufficiently powerful Fair Folk can lean on the fourth wall.


End file.
